Thanksgívíng
Yesterday was Thanksgiving at my Mom’s house in Clintondale. This meal was different from the Thanksgiving meals of my youth, because my Mom hosted ten guests: her students from an English as a Second Language Program, a part of Ulster Literacy.
More than three years ago, my Mom mustered her energy — which, as someone who lives with MS, isn’t always a lot — to begin work with Ulster Literacy. Their mission, in part, is to teach English to migrant farm workers, many of whom are recent immigrants from Mexico or Guatemala, at the local farms of Ulster County. Mom was instrumental in taking this program beyond local libraries and to the farms themselves, where a lunchtime tutoring session is a more reasonable proposition for someone working a difficult job (and sometimes more than one difficult job). I am incredibly proud of her and the work she’s done.
Over a traditional Thanksgiving meal, I met the students she and her fellow Ulster Literacy folk help: Iracema and her daughter Maria José, Jeronimo, Jairo, Francisco, Enrique, Carlos, Manuel, Judy and Hippólito. They were so, well, thankful, to be there, and my Mom was pleased as punch to host them. My childhood home is surrounded by apple orchards, but these farm workers are largely invisible to many of the people who live in Ulster County.
This recent election was a divisive one. Immigrants, whether legal or not, and the concept of the “other” were at the heart of of it, but of course, disagreement over who we let in is nothing new. There wouldn’t be any Baseks without the open-heartedness of the Gladieux family, who sponsored my father’s side of the family in 1952 after they fled communist Czechoslovakia via the UK. If you were Jewish, it was not possible to emigrate to the US in 1952 without a sponsor. Following the war, Dad was born in the Salvation Army Hospital in London. My grandfather, who was not Jewish, protected my grandmother, uncle and aunt, who were, first from the Nazis, then from the Communists.
The path from political refugee to “real American” is not as long as those febrile with anti-immigrant rhetoric would have you believe. The beauty of America is that it is open. The spaces are wide open. The society is, for the most part, open. It’s not always fair, but the promise and possibility of a new life, of advancement, of contributing to society and to the country and the community, is there.
In many parts of the world, they’ve been fighting, as Grandma Basek would say, since the earth cooled. The United States is supposed to know better, even when we pursue incredibly stupid ideas like the Chinese Exclusion Act, internment camps, or racial quotas for visas and university admissions. It’s something to remember as we consider hideous things like religious registries and mass deportations. It’s something that Scots-Irish folks in places like Appalachia or Ashtabula County should think about, too. Their ancestors were the ones on the receiving end of “Help Wanted: Irish need not apply” signs. Same for the Italians in Nassau County — pick up a copy of Christ in Concrete — or the Germans or Poles or whichever ethnicity, discrimination and region you want to pick. If your family is thankful for what they have now, they should have the self-awareness not to pull up the ladder behind them.
When I was growing up in Clintondale, the apple pickers weren’t Mexicans, but Jamaicans. Up the street from the house, we had one bar in Clintondale, now a German restaurant that the NY Times recently “discovered,” but at the time, a Jamaican bar. Demographics and populations change, gaining power and influence as they climb the socioeconomic ladder. Once, though, it was your ancestors picking the fruit, laying the concrete, jamming into a dumbbell tenement apartment. We should all aim to have the decency and grace to understand our own histories, and to welcome the next generation of people who seek a better life on our shores. The idea that “these people” are terrorists, or milking the system or hardened criminals is preposterous. They want to support their families and give a better life to their kids, just like your family. We should be thrilled to give them that opportunity. The rest is gravy.
